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The Hagerman Audio Labs Tuba Headphone Amp (image by Bob Levi) About 12 years ago I reviewed the Hagerman Trumpet, a very fine all-tube phono stage, built in Hawaii. It was impressive and musical and priced around $2000. It outperformed my Pass X Phono, a $4000 piece, and I almost bought it. When I was... Read More »

Audio cables act as passive filters, affecting the performance of a high fidelity speaker system for better or worse, depending on interactions with the room, first, the electronics, second, and personal tastes of the listener, third. As with a wine and food match at a chic bistro, the resulting interactions can be mediocre to stellar,... Read More »

I've owned a pair of Zu Audio Omens—the Dirty Weekend (DW) variety—for over five years now. Zu builds high-efficiency loudspeakers that employ 10-inch full range drivers and compression tweeters, with many of their models approaching 97dB per 1 watt input. During operation, the 10-inch drivers, which are custom-manufactured for Zu by Eminence in Kentucky, run... Read More »

The Grado Labs GH4 in place at Chez Levi (photograph by Bob Levi) The GH4 is Grado's second foray into creating headphones using Norwegian pine, upping the ante and overall headphone performance quite nicely along the way. By my count, Grado has used two types of mahogany, maple, oak wood treated by a whiskey barrel... Read More »

Let's face it, AC line power is the bedrock of every audio system. Not only is this singularly common commodity a fundamentally important component, vital for powering all gear in a system, the quality of that AC power line happens to significantly influence the performance capability of every component in each HiFi rig. The bad... Read More »

The Unbearable Joy of Thinking Outside the Box Now that GTT Audio & Video head Bill Parish and I are finally back on friendly terms (heck, he even calls me on the phone occasionally to give me a hard time, and to ask when I plan on finishing the reviews I promised to write, if... Read More »

I enjoyed hearing ATC's 40A (then $12,999) speaker four years ago; enough so I was tempted to buy them (see HERE for the review). They had a fuller range than my reference, and the sound was a bit sweeter. However, my reference ATCs employ an "SL" (super linear) driver for midrange and lower frequencies, as... Read More »

I don't suppose I'm alone in admiring those who can really work with their hands. Years ago, while serving a semester-long sentence in woodshop, I envied my pals who could cut, glue, plane, and sand mundane articles like planters and bowls into magnificent works of craftsmanship. Not being able to do any of this, I... Read More »

Monteverdi, L'incoronazione di Poppea. Les Ars Florissants, Willam Christie. Harmonia Mundi 8902622.24 3 CD's, 1 DVD. This new release of Monteverdi's last opera, considered by students of the composer's work to be his best, is an extraordinary musical enterprise, especially if you take into consideration Jan Lauwers' somewhat off the wall stage production provided on... Read More »

With a firm desire for innovation and iterative design, Schiit are a company which have taken the world of high-end personal audio by storm one product at a time. Their latest creation comes in the form of the Ragnarok 2—an integrated amplifier that improves upon the original with its modular design, heatsink components, and a... Read More »

I am sometimes ashamed of how little we know about audio, how little we understand about it. We fly to the Moon, we are getting ready to fly to Mars, we have quite good knowledge of how the universe is changing and what its structure is, we have found thousands of planets that are similar... Read More »

Phono preamplifiers come in all shapes and sizes and with varying amounts of user adjustability and convenience. The ARC Ref 3 phono preamplifier is hands down the smartest phono section I have ever had the pleasure of using and listening to. At the bottom of the intelligence pecking order are phono preamplifiers that only have... Read More »

Prologue: A Berning Desire Many years ago, I purchased a boxy little bespoke headphone amp for my Sennheiser HD600's called a MicroZOTL. Built by a mysterious mid-Atlantic, not-so-mad audio scientist by the name of David Berning, the MicroZOTL was a mighty tiny wonder. I loved it so much I had physicist / audio manufacturer Berning... Read More »

I tend to jump into things blindly, especially when it comes to this hobby. Most of the amps, headphones, and speakers that I am interested in are not sold locally. Some of the best things in this hobby are made to order, and they often times don't have a 30 day trail. Needless to say,... Read More »

RAFF: Ode au printemps, Op. 76*; Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 185; Caprice on Themes from König Alfred, Op. 65, No. 2. Tra Nguyen, piano; *Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra/Kerry Stratton. Grand Piano GP 771. TT: 67.06 Downloads: amazon.co.uk (mp3); classicalarchives.com (mp3); prestomusic.com (mp3, FLAC); qobuz.com (mp3, "Hi-Res") If you like Romantic music, it's worth exploring the... Read More »

Review By Dean Cacioppo With this article, Positive Feedback continues its content-sharing relationship with Enjoy the Music. Dean Cacioppo shares his thoughts about the Backert Labs Rhumba Extreme 1.3 Preamplifier. Read, and learn.... Dr. David W. Robinson, Editor-in-Chief In my humble opinion, the two most under appreciated aspects of high-end audio are room acoustics / speaker placement and... Read More »

Pure Audio are a Taiwanese audio company with years of audio design experience under their belt. Despite not being famous amongst audio circles, the brand have attempted to break into international waters with their first successful distributor, Underwood HiFi, residing in the U.S.  Part of their mission to win customers on a global scale has... Read More »

Keces Audio (stylized KECES) is a high end audio audio manufacturer based out of Taiwan. They curate several different components, mostly focused around power (both creation and conditioning), so this review will be in two parts. One for the BP-2400 Balanced Isolation Power Conditioner, and the other for the P8 Linear DC Power Supply (Dual... Read More »

Yes, V-TEE-I. That is not a typo. VTI is not from New Jersey; they don't make turntables (although they support them nicely); as far as I know, the initials stand for something other than Virgo Taurus Industries. Actually, I had never heard of them until recently, myself. I was mulling the prospect of replacing my... Read More »